The Pirates of Ersatz Part 16

"A bad morning, Bron Hoddan! A bad morning! Men from Walden came riding over the hills--"

"How many?"

"Two," said Fani angrily. "A fat man in a uniform, and a young man who looks like he wants to cry. They had an escort of retainers from one of my father's neighbors. They were stopped at the gate, of course, and they sent a written message in to my father, and he had them brought inside right away!"

Hoddan shook his head.

"They probably said that I'm a criminal and that I should be sent back to Walden. How'd they get down? The landing grid isn't working."

Fani said viciously:

"They landed in something that used rockets. It came down close to a castle over that way--only six or seven miles from the s.p.a.ceport. They asked for you. They said you'd have landed from the last liner from Walden. And because you and Thal fought so splendidly--why, everybody's talking about you. So the chieftain over there accepted a present of money from them, and gave them horses as a return gift, and sent them here with a guard. Thal talked to the guards. The men from Walden have promised huge gifts of money if they help take you back to the thing that uses rockets."

"I suspect," said Hoddan, "that it would be a s.p.a.ceboat--a lifeboat.

Hm-m-m.... Yes. With a built-in tool-steel cell to keep me from telling anybody how to make--" He stopped and grimaced. "If they had time to build one in, that's certain! They'd take me to the s.p.a.ceport in a sound-proofed can and I'd be hauled back to Walden in it. Fine!"

"What are you going to do?" asked Fani anxiously.

Hoddan's ideas were not clear. But Darth was not a healthy place for him. It was extremely likely, for example, that Don Loris would feel that the very bad jolt he'd given that astute schemer's plans, by using stun-pistols at the s.p.a.ceport, had been neatly canceled out by his rescue of Fani. He would regard Hoddan with a mingled grat.i.tude and aversion that would amount to calm detachment. Don Loris could not be counted on as a really warm personal friend.

On the other hand, the social system of Darth was not favorable to a stranger with an already lurid reputation for fighting, but whose weapons would be useless unless frequently recharged--and who couldn't count on that as a steady thing.

As a practical matter, his best bet was probably to investigate the nine inexplicable s.h.i.+ps overhead. They hadn't co-operated with the Waldenians. It could be inferred that no confidential relations.h.i.+p existed up there. It was possible that the nine s.h.i.+ps and the Waldenians didn't even know of each other's presence. There is a lot of room in s.p.a.ce. If both called on s.h.i.+p-frequency and listened on ground-frequency, they would not have picked up each others' summons to the ground.

"You've got to do something!" insisted Fani. "I saw Father talking to them! He looked happy, and he never looks happy unless he's planning some skulduggery!"

"I think," said Hoddan, "that I'll have some breakfast, if I may. As soon as I fasten up my s.h.i.+p bag."

Thal said mournfully:

"If anything happens to you, something will happen to me too, because I helped you."

"Breakfast first," said Hoddan. "That, as I understand it, should make it disgraceful for your father to have my throat cut. But beyond that--"

He said gloomily. "Thal, get a couple of horses outside the wall. We may need to ride somewhere. I'm very much afraid we will. But first I'd like to have some breakfast."

Fani said disappointedly:

"But aren't you going to face them? The men from Walden? You could shoot them!"

Hoddan shook his head.

"It wouldn't solve anything. Anyhow a practical man like your father won't sell me out before he's sure I can't pay off better. I'll bet on a conference with me before he makes a deal."

Fani stamped her foot.

"Outrageous! Think what you saved me from!"

But she did not question the possibility. Hoddan observed:

"A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a n.o.ble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community. I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?"

He strapped the s.h.i.+p bag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not hold. He made a minor adjustment to the s.p.a.ce communicator. It was not ruined, but n.o.body else could use it without much labor finding out what he'd done. This was the sort of thing his grandfather on Zan would have advised. His grandfather's views were explicit.

"Helping one's neighbor," he'd said frequently in Hoddan's hearing while Hoddan was a youth, "is all right as a two-way job. But maybe he's laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he can't do you no harm and you're a lot better off and he's a h.e.l.l of a lot better neighbor!"

This was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that Derec was one of them. The other would represent the police or the planetary government. It was probably just as true of Don Loris and others.

Hoddan found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed.

Even though presently he sat at breakfast high up on the battlements, and Fani looked at him with interesting anxiety, he was filled with forebodings. The future looked dark. Yet what he asked of fate and chance was so simple! He asked only a career and riches and a delightful girl to marry and the admiration of his fellow-citizens. Trivial things!

But it looked like he'd have to do battle for even such minor gifts of destiny!

Fani watched him breakfast.

"I don't understand you," she complained. "Anybody else would be proud of what he'd done and angry with my father. Or don't you think he'll act ungratefully?"

"Of course I do!" said Hoddan.

"Then why aren't you angry?"

"I'm hungry," said Hoddan.

"And you take it for granted that I want to be properly grateful," said Fani in one breath, "and yet you haven't shown the least appreciation of my getting two horses over in that patch of woodland yonder"--she pointed and Hoddan nodded--"and having Thal there with orders to serve you faithfully--"

She stopped short. Don Loris appeared, beaming, at the top of the steps leading here from the great hall where conferences took place. He regarded Hoddan benignly.

"This is a very bad business, my dear fellow," he said benevolently.

"Has Fani told you of the people who arrived from Walden in search of you? They tell me terrible things about you!"

"Yes," said Hoddan. He prepared a roll for biting. He said: "One of them, I think, is named Derec. He's to identify me so good money isn't wasted paying for the wrong man. The other man's police, isn't he?" He reflected a moment. "If I were you, I'd start talking at a million credits. You might get half that."

He bit into the roll as Don Loris looked shocked.

"Do you think," he asked indignantly, "that I would give up the rescuer of my daughter to emissaries from a foreign planet, to be locked in a dungeon for life?"

"Not in those words," conceded Hoddan. "But after all, despite your deep grat.i.tude to me, there are such things as one's duty to humanity as a whole. And while it would cause you bitter anguish if someone dear to you represented a danger to millions of innocent women and children--still, under such circ.u.mstances you might feel it necessary to do violence to your own emotions."

Don Loris looked at him with abrupt suspicion. Hoddan waved the roll.

"Moreover," he observed, "grat.i.tude for actions done on Darth does not ent.i.tle you to judge of my actions on Walden. While you might and even should feel obliged to defend me in all things I have done on Darth, your obligation to me does not let you deny that I may have acted less defensibly on Walden."

Don Loris looked extremely uneasy.

"I may have thought something like that," he admitted. "But--"

"So that," said Hoddan, "while your debt to me cannot and should not be overlooked, nevertheless"--Hoddan put the roll into his mouth and spoke less clearly--"you feel that you should give consideration to the claims of Walden to inquire into my actions while there."